The Legend of John-Charles: Galicia #2: Salamanca!

That afternoon we arrived in Salamanca. It’s a really cool college town that had a pretty neat city center.

Salamanca is famous for being on the way to Santiago. It is covered in seashells because that is one of Saint James’s symbols.

An old BYU professor volunteered to give us a tour of the city and show us all that he knew because he had been to Spain over 30 times with many study abroad groups and many more private ventures. He took us to the cathedral which had some interesting carvings.

Can you find the astronaut and the ice cream cone? The inside of the Cathedral was very beautiful.

It was one of the perfect examples of Gothic style with the arches and such that allow for higher vaults and such.

Here is Mr. George Rhyscamp and a pretty cool looking Coat of Arms.

He was telling us all about how the coat of arms used to be like a language to people and anyone could look at one and know a ton about a person. Now people do studies and spend years learning was any 14 yr old boy off the street could have told them 700 years ago. It’s pretty crazy how that stuff works. Anyways, I found out why there are always little slits in the floors of old churches. Back in the day, when people died, they chose which church to be buried in and rather than be buried in the church cemetery, which didn’t exist at the time, they were buried underneath the floor of the chapel. So, they’d pull up the tiles and bury people with a bunch of limes to speed up decay, and then take all the bones out and have a mass bone burial. I decided I needed a photo to commemorate the learning of a long time curiosity.

There was some cardinal who, for some reason or another, needed to be buried with four pillows and two angels holding his head up.

That is some crazy devotion to church leadership. Apparently, in Spain, even statues bleed and make marks when their heads are chopped off.

I wonder how authentic looking those marks are. We need to get CSI in here. Katie, this one is for you.

This picture was another of my masterful designs.

Sometimes I look back and think, “Where do these ideas come from?” I don’t really think I was supposed to sit in this chair.

Anyways, after the cathedral we walked around the city a bit and Mr. Rhyscamp showed us where Franco lived and had his base of operations during the Spanish Civil War.

In the Civil War museum lobby we saw an awesome reproduction of Guernica done completely with other small photos.

It was really cool. Each of these trips we go on I appreciate art more and more. We went from there to the University and somewhere on the wall there is a frog that will bring luck and marriage within the next year if you find it without any help.

Luckily, Andrew showed me where it was so I have at least a year.

The school was cool and here is a funny story. There was a famous professor who was caught up by the inquisition and was in prison for five years and when he was released everyone crowded into this room to hear his first discussion after prison, thinking it would be something amazing about what had happen and he started off by saying, “As we were saying yesterday” and then continued talking.